If it’s possible to work for Donald Trump and still remain an honest person, we haven’t seen evidence of it yet.

Time and again, even the most serious and respected people in the Trump administration — people who were looked to as good influences on the ignorant and impulsive president, or, in a worst-case scenario, as canaries in the coal mine — have ended up going out to defend Trump over something indefensible. They may not be technically lying, but they are advancing Trump’s narrative instead of advancing the truth. And more often than not, Trump has repaid them by making them look like fools — admitting he committed whatever sin they’ve helped to cover up. [emphases mine]

Take National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who was trotted out to the press Monday night to push back against reports that Trump had divulged super-classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador during a meeting last week (and possibly put a key anti-ISIS source in danger by doing so).

McMaster’s carefully worded non-denial denial all but went up in smoke by Tuesday morning, when Trump tweeted that he’d had very good reasons to give information to the Russians. By the time McMaster delivered a second press briefing Tuesday, he was affirmatively defending Trump’s decision to share information as “wholly appropriate” — and chiding the press for the “leaks” he’d earlier tried to discredit…

What McMaster, Pence, and Rosenstein have done is different. They’ve made statements that are carefully crafted to avoid saying anything that’s technically inaccurate. But those statements have been made to serve a White House narrative that is, itself, a lie.

They’re being accurate. But they’re not being honest…

There are other definitions of integrity. You can decide that you’re acting with integrity if you failed to stop something bad from happening but didn’t do anything to facilitate it. You can decide you’re acting with integrity if lies are going on around you but you don’t say anything that is a lie yourself.

If you’re concerned with preserving your own reputation, that may well make sense. “Yes, I was part of the Trump administration,” you can imagine someone saying a decade from now, “but they never made me lie.” You might be impressed by that. It’s an impressive feat.

Right now that’s the standard that McMaster, Rosenstein, and Pence have met. They have never made false statements. They have only been used to make falsehoods appear true — and made people look like fools for taking them at their word.

McMaster did not deny that Trump decided to leak the information on his own without having first discussed doing so with intelligence officials…

Here’s what is clear: McMaster is entering dangerous territory here by trying to refute this story and adopting the administration’s talking points. For the “hero” who once passionately argued for the importance of standing up for truth in the face of a president’s lies, that course of action seems decidedly unheroic.